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Topic: Jugular (Read 3033 times)

My sweet girls have been going for the jugular this week. I was making some design changes to a couple of nucs this week and took a sting to the jugular and one to the back of my neck; right on the vertebrae today!

I’ll tell you what, the bees flock to my white bee suit like flies on you know what this time of year. It seems like the bee suit is the brightest area in their visual zone this time of year and they tend to fly toward the light…or lightest thing they see.

My mini mating nucs were very active today, but I didn’t peek in on them. Somebody says not to peek. :) I wonder how much of their pre-Christmas meal they’ve consumed so far?

All mine were out and about looking for food sources today with the warmup to 50 degrees. This weather is starting to feel a lot like last winter to me. I thought that it was suppose to be our normal winter weather this year. I hope I don't have to make a bunch more candy bricks as a backup plan. I won't open any unless there seems to be no traffic.

So far I think there's only been a couple of days down here that they have been out. Last winter and first of spring most of my hives were kind of hostile. This was my first spring with bees, they all swarmed, since then they have all been real nice. The old hives and the swarms, I caught them all. I am not sure how but Wensday I saw a patch of about 2 acreas of rag weed still in bloom. Looked young with bright yellow flowers, thought my girls would like to be here. It was about 10 miles up the road. All here is gone already. Watch out Blue, good luck this winter to you all.

No, they didn't get me through the suit. The jugular happened earlier in the week on a grayish day of about 45F. I went to make some mods to a nuc and before I knew it my suit was covered with bees. They were really attracted to the white of the suit on that day. I tried to shake them off, but didn't get them all. I took the suit off and put it in the warm car to drive home. The bees on the suit warmed up in the warm car and one crawled up to my neck and got me. Actually didn't get much of a reaction from either neck sting.

This summer I helped a colleague who had some hot bees so as usual I suited up and didn't get any stings.When we got back to his extracting house and were getting ready to unload I put my hood on and a bee had crawled into my hat/veil and stung me on the top of the head, :thunder: it felt like lightning struck my head double vision and lightning bolts in my head. I felt a little drunk for a while :cheer:Those small quiet creeping :evil: lady's :evil: will get you every time

That is interesting Edward! I’ve never been stung on the top of the head, but I assumed it would be relatively insensitive since there isn’t much muscle or big blood veins up there. My worst reaction (swelling) is when they get me in a high blood flow area like around the wrist or a leg muscle.

The sting I got on the back of the neck was from a bee that go into my suit. I hate it when that happens.

I've more or less given up the fight against those quiet crawling bees that get you in the car 5 minutes after you've taken of your hat/veil :-\

The neighbours are getting used to seeing some strange weirdo driving around in a space suite :-D (also it protects you from cosmic radiation and the thought police reading my mind) :roll:

This was the first year that I haven't had reactions from stings through the bee suit more than the initial discomfort, previous years I had swelling and itching that lasted 4 days. But the head shot was the worst so far :( and lasted for few hours.

mvh edward :-P

ps, still going to use the suit even though a seem to bee more tolerant, don't use the smoker though

As much as I despise the poor design of the bee keeper's smoker, I really hate to take apart a hive without one. Once that first sting happens in a big hive, I find the smoker very useful to cover the alarm scent and keep my stings down in the single digits. :-D

I did find something that worked pretty well for my smoker this week. I dipped some corrugated cardboard half way in used motor oil before TRYING to lite my smoker. While the motor oil didn't do much for starting a flame, it did WONDERS for keeping the thing going and hot enough to smoke up fresh weeds when it ran low.

OK, I was kidding about using motor oil :-D, but I have had a heck of time keeping my darn smoker lit. It’s really frustrating when the alarm scent is in the air and your dang smoker goes out. It may be a 50:50 problem: A really poor design for generating smoke, and a lack of preparation on my part. I was never a boy scout!

Blue, you are using the tall (10 inch) smoker aren't you? How about the handheld propane torch?I have trouble putting mine out after using. I plug the nozzle with a wine cork and its still smolders forever.

Garden pot and feed store started drying coffee and coca beans and had totes of burlap out front with ‘free’ on them. I must have got 100. It was like an addiction. I would grab about 10 when they were dry, or 10 when the bags were in good shape, or 20 wet ones and hang them out to dry….. :-DA very open weave and Burn, holy crap! I wear nitrite gloves to work my bees and melted a pair to my hand before getting the strip pushed into my smoker.